Buying the dream.
Withen a few years, my father bought the house from his neighbor, Mrs. Pruden. It was  around 1950 then and she carried the loan. He paid a total of three thousand  four hundred dollars, when all was said and done.  He was an older man then and the depression was fresh in his mind. He was determined  to own it. At the time it was just a long building, made of metal. He added two bedrooms and extended the livng room. He had my half sister, about ten, and my middle sister about two. And me, I was still in the planing stages then.

Corralitos...Late 1950s. 
In those days, the Valley was much less populated. Maybe thirteen or fourteen houses on Blake rd. There was no garbage pick up, but milk was delivered daily. The milk man wore a tie and dressed in a white uniform. And by the late fifties it was popular to order the Humpty Dumpty  Diaper service for young mothers. They came down Blake road in a tune playing truck with a picture of Humpty on the side. I remember it being very cold, even icey  in winter .  And in summer,  lazy and warm. Bee's buzzing away in the nearby orchards.
Which brings to mind another post war  incarnation, the crop duster. Liberally  dumping God knows what on the nearby feilds.  Diving and dipping  and roaring along  the tree tops.  It was a very good time to grow up in Corralitos.

The house at One Blake road.

It was early in the 1950's when my father Bob Briley came and rented the house . It was originally a wartime storage building,  bought off the docks in the Bay Area. Converted to post war houseing , it sat back off the lane at Blake and Alderidge. He worked at the Southern Pacific Railroad out of Watsonville. He got himself transferred here when he and mother suffered the loss of their first child in San Fancisco. Dr. told him, get her pregnant and move her well out of the city. Corralitos was far from their heart break. and breathtakingly beautiful.

One Blake Road

Here is the picture of the house.

1986
1952